Frank McCourt Quotes
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If I have a cause, it's the cause of the teacher.
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For some reason, I had a responsibility to my family and the people who lived around me. I felt that I had to convey their dignity - the way they dealt with adversity and poverty - and their good humor.
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You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right under your nose.
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When I was a teacher, I'd walk into the classroom. I stood at the board. I was the man. I directed operations. I was an intellectual and artistic and moral traffic cop, and I - and I would direct the class, most of the time.
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I was unloading sides of beef down on the docks when I decided enough was enough. By then, I'd done a lot of reading on my own, so I persuaded New York University to enroll me.
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When I came to America, I dreamed bigger dreams.
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I wanted to avoid all that literary stuff. I didn't want the self pity of 'The Portrait,' all the moaning and the whingeing. I'm not knocking Joyce: we all owe him a debt. He's the one who made so much possible.
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My dream was to have a Library of Congress catalogue number, that's all.
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Scatter my ashes on the Shannon.
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Ireland, once you live there, you're seduced by it.
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The day I write my last word will be the day that I feel free.
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I was ashamed of it, of the poverty I came from.
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I'm always a great student of writers' work habits. Balzac sat at his desk dressed in a monk's robe, and he always had to have a rotten apple on his desk. The smell of the apple inspired him somehow.
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They know it's a forty-minute showdown, you versus them. … They have you by the balls and you created the situation, man. You didn't have to talk to them like that. They don’t care about your mood, your headache, your troubles. They have their own problems, and you are one of them.
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I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'
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It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.
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I can do no more than tell the truth.
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Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever.